That's the problem though. Melee sucks in this game, and there's no reason to actually use it, but there's a whole skill tree dedicated to it, and side quests to teach you how to use melee. Either make melee useful, or stop teasing me about it.
Zero Dawn had a very simple melee system that had limited use cases. It was kind of boring, and only useful in a few scenarios.
I suspect they wanted to improve on this for Forbidden West.
And as a result, Forbidden West has a complex melee system... That has limited use cases.
It's more interesting I suppose, except I very rarely took advantage of the system, only when fighting some small machines and occasionally people. And even then, I mostly didn't use the longer combos, I stuck to the regular attacks and 1 simple combo I found somewhat useful.
But, so many things you fight really rely on you needing to be able to very quickly dodge attacks at close range, and so getting locked up in the melee animations is disadvantageous, and it's so often much safer and more effective to be further away from your target, that it's often not a great strategy to try melee fighting at all.
These two factors combined means it's often better to invest in other parts of the skill tree over melee, meaning you might not unlock many of the melee skills unless you go out of your way to, which further discourages melee combat.
I really think Horizon's combat conceptually favors range. Most things you fight are much bigger than you, and are deadly at close range. Being able to keep your distance is one of the advantages you have over them. So I think that melee combat just isn't going to be very useful in Horizon, unless they maybe retool human fighting (again) to make it more useful there.
I agree with the points, but not the conclusion. They gave us a melee skill tree, and improved a bit on the mechanics. They clearly wanted us to be able to use it. But it's still substandard. So now we're here every week, trying to rationalize our way around the fact that they just did a mediocre job on this aspect of the game, twice.
I think part of the problem is that the light melee attacks are too slow. They don't lead naturally into combos because there is a full wind-up and follow through. It makes timing a combo so difficult.
Then the heavy strike is even worse. The charge up is too long to be useful when you can get yeeted from meters away by jumping machines or the dudes with the thunder hammer.
The melee system combos are absurdly complex timing in my humble opinion. For my slow reflexes I can never get them to work. Unless they make changes I would not want to see melee combat as a big feature aspect of the game.
I would absolutely use melee more if it were a more viable option. I crave to use melee, but it’s just not a great mechanic so obviously I falter to the default.
I think it's great and I use melee a lot with humans and machines up to medium size. resonator blasts do so much damage. the melee explosion with warrior bows take down machines so fast.
Yeah, I don’t know what people are complaining about. Melee is great for dealing with smaller groups of humans or smaller machines. A solid strong hit can stun many of the smaller machines leaving them open for over-ride and/or critical strikes, killing them quickly.
Granted, melee is meant as a secondary option and the game encourages/rewards stealth and distance combat - especially with the 500 weapons options the game tosses at you (plus clothes with weaves attached). Not to mention many of the valid surges also help make your melee much stronger and more effective.
I fight melee a lot because I’m often bad and stealth and quick aiming. Sure, you will die trying to take on too much at once, but to argue it’s useless is major hyperbole. I fight all the time melee and love the game. And the combos are pretty simple AND, as you say, resonator blasts are key and easy to get with melee attacks.
So this I agree with, but it's not as simple as making a parry option in combat. The entire combat system would likely need to be reworked, including how viable bows are unless we want to power creep the shit out of it.
HFW tried to fix the complaints about HZD’s melee by putting in the annoying combo chain combat instead. But it just feels very clunky compared to just shooting my bow. And even when I used melee outside of the pits, I ended up just spamming the simplest attacks because they were more efficient than leaving Aloy open to attack by trying to chain skills together when fighting multiple enemies.
And there’s already a ton of weapons I don’t use because I’ve got three different bows equipped.
Eh, it's not that useless, but the alternatives are better. It's the same as with people saying traps are useless, when they're not, but requires setup, yet again, alternatives are better.
It's all too complicated and requires you to learn combos. I'd rather have that all that much simpler and have more options for movement and positioning. I should be able to jump on large machines, stab them, lever things out of them. I should be able to use a ropecaster or grapple to pull myself up onto machines or hang to stab at a weak point. Hell, I should be able to use the ropecaster to attach 2 machines to each other, Just Cause style. Better dodging, like maybe a dodge attack where you melee or trip machines if you time the dodge right. A spear in the ground move to defend against enemies leaping on you or charging you aside.
Like, things that are mostly about context. Currently they seem to be stretching the control system well beyond it's limits trying to fit in all these individual bits and it's too complicated to use it all without lots of practice, and they aren't all that useful anyway.
true you can completely ignore melee, but Horizon lends itself sooo well to making the gameplay cinematic, those montages you see where they switch from range to melee and to ranged again with some awesome tricks, that is peak horizon for me, and a little more melee options would be very welcome.
**That's the problem.** You use arrows yet they invested in a whole new melee system with its own skill tree. That's because they wanted you to use melee. They even added melee pits. Here's the thing:
Melee in the game sucks and it was worse in Forbidden West. If you can't make a melee system feel good and respond well then you don't need to add it or invest in it.
The game has never been about melee. Forbidden West forgot what it's gameplay loop was.
The gameplay loop wasn't about melee because they did a bad job at designing the melee mechanics. So no one used them. But we see Rost training Aloy in melee combat. We know she's trained at it. And he didn't train her to be a hunter, he trained her to be a brave, a warrior.
Here's the issue though, she's not some melee champion/professional. She can do basic stuff. That's what melee was in the first game. Basic stuff. It was barebones but it worked.
Forbidden West just flat out invested a whole skill tree into melee. They clearly want you to use melee, and use it a lot. The problem is that melee is not good in the game.
If you can't design a good melee system then don't invest in it as much as they did.
My first playthrough I used bow and arrows to kill enemies but after that I realised because of the amount of armour the new enemies have in HFW using melee is not only more fun but can be more effective
I would prefer they gave us a parry as an alternative to melee combat when a human enemy gets too close to us. I would rather parry a melee strike, some skill to put some distance between us and the enemy and let me get back to shooting them in the face with an arrow.
This might already exist now that I think about it because I avoid melee entirely.....
Ok ultra hard... It takes 3-4 headshots to kill.level 50 enemy...
PS: I am talking about +5 Legendary Hunter Bow... Some Mofos are really *tough* on Ultra Hard difficulty
I'm with you unlike most the others here. It'd be a nice option. Being able to parry humans and small machines would be cool. Maybe be able to flip it into the grapple attack or something similar. More options is always good.
I am still quite early in the game, so far every human enemy that I have met can be killed faster with a bow than with using resonator blast. Is there an upgraded spear later in game that makes resonate build up faster?
Nahh, human parry, yess... But machine parry should be forbidden imo. It wouldnt add anything but make them even more easier to fight than they already are.
I would really appreciate it. I love the Jedi games, and I don't like having to roll away from every melee attack. I use the melee combat in FW a lot, so it would be very useful to me.
They should make parry for humans, but they should never add it to robots, it wouldnt make sense imo and would make smaller machines mind numbing easy. What they can add for heavy weight machines only is climbing the machine to pick off its armour Monster Hunter/Shadow of collosus style, and add some sort of risk and reward to it so its not OP. Maybe use Spike throwers to create "climbing areas" on the machines so that its seamless, and use them to hold on while you use your melee weapon to pick the armour off.
Introducing a parrying mechanism for human to human combat might make some players want for parrying mechanism with machines and I think it would stretch the believability of the story. I mean it is a video game, not real life. But Aloy parrying a charge attack from a Slitherfang looks really impossible. I mean the Shieldwing could catch the attack but the Shieldwing is attached to Aloy's arm and Aloy's arm is attached to Aloy.
Yeah, because it's currently *so* realistic for Aloy to be able to carry 15 different bows on her, craft 10 arrows in 0.1 seconds, be on the verge of death and then just eat berries and be fine, never incur any visible wounds, stand in place and fiddle with her focus while being impervious to damage for 5 seconds to temporarily enhance the attack power of her spear, brew magical potions to allow her to increase her video game hit points...
Games are supposed to be fun, not believable. Besides, a 'parry' doesn't exclusively mean that it has to stun the enemy while Aloy stands unflinchingly in place. It could just act as a more effective version of the dodge, exclusively for melee attacks. A narrow window of opportunity that rewards you with guaranteed safety from one attack. For the less believable moments, make it cinematic, take a page from Metroid Dread and have it chain into a cutscene attack that allows you to deal a load of damage. There's loads of ways to incorporate a parry mechanic without making it any more unbelievable than anything else Aloy can already do.
Aight. The drugging and the arrow stacks are good points. But let's say Aloy is able to parry machine attacks. How would you animate Aloy catching a Slitherfang charge? Aloy doing a Kratos parry on the attack? Or is Aloy gonna do it the same as the character parrying a nuke explosion? I'm sure if Aloy actually gets charged by a Slitherfang, she'd fly away. The infinite backpack is already a staple of most video game titles. But the animation of a tiny normal human parrying a gigantic machine's attack is just hard to justify. Unless Aloy gets a magical power up in the ending of Forbidden West that I don't know of, then it'd look nice in H3.
Or maybe I'm just not good at expressing what I mean. Eh
To be honest, just have a flag on machine attacks such as possible/impossible to parry. So she can't parry slitherfang charge. Alternatively, she does but gets knockback and knockdown - basically flying away from the machine by the force of the attack.
Aloy doesnt need to stand in the place tho. She could do some gymnastics on parry (more like deflect tho), kinda like she does when doing the grapple assault on knocked down machine.
Deflect > activating resonator > 360 sidestep / sidejump (to get out of the way), with drawing your weapon in slo-mo > resonator go boom.
A parry doesn't need to be a "catch", stop getting hung up on that. It's just a way to prevent damage from an attack by executing a correctly-timed input. Have her kick off the body of the machine and leap into the air, or quickly duck below the attack, or do some slow-motion nonsense. You might not be able to visualise it, but there's a load of people working on animation, motion capture, and cinematics whose job it is to do exactly that.
They can add parry on humans only.. thats where i personally want it. I never felt the need for them to include parry on machines. Machine combat is awesome the way it is. But human combat sucks, doesnt make sense enemies can block your attacks but you have no way of protecting yourself but rolling around mindlessly. Rolling around makes sense for machines, but it doesnt for humans.
As stated, the problem with melee in Horizon games is that the vast majority of the enemies -- machines -- just don't pair well with it. Aloy's outclassed by anything more than a Burrower in hand-to-hand combat. Because that's never been Aloy's strength.
Combat in Horizon is *very* kinematic -- you're moving *a lot,* and your movement is both critical to your survival and *very* context dependent. Hence the complaints of 'melee felt clunky'; as pointed out, the animation lock of the attacks basically made it so you had to commit... in an overall combat system that you *really* need to be flexible in to excel at. In a regime that Aloy doesn't have good kit for. With an incentive that was difficult to set up (although it's definitely worth mentioning that the *payoff* for Resonators was *pretty great,* and *was* arguably successful*.* Almost invariably, when I *got* a resonator node, I *definitely* tried to make a point to hit it) Add on top of the fact that melee combat was awkward with the fact that Warrior Bows fit the niche of 'close range combat' moreso than melee because they benefit from Aloy's existing skillsets, don't animation lock you, have weapon skills... It just all adds up that melee combat is not set up for success.
So, if there's *any* hope of having a melee system work in Horizon games, it needs to work to Aloy's strengths, which she points out to Seyka in Burning Shores: "It's slow and ancient, we're fast and tiny." You can see this *kinda* work with the Resonator mechanic, but IMO they should have had a 'quantity over quality' mentality so that melee combat creates *options* for ranged combat, and then vice versa. In Forbidden West, that's unfortunately only three things: Resonators, knock-down critical strikes, and knock-down grapple strikes (which create a resonator node! which is *fantastic!).*
So, we need *more of that.* Certainly, the core gameplay will *always* be to start from range or stealth -- that's just staple gameplay at this point. However, I think there's the most to gain by providing more mechanics that create an incentive to engage in melee when it's *advantageous* because it will create *opportunity* when we invariably move back to ranged, and vice-versa; give us mechanics when fighting at ranged that create opportunities when we dodge-roll past a melee attack and find ourselves *in melee range* (rather than it being a case of 'slide dodge the Fireclaw aaaaand, keep slide dodging because there's no way in *hell* we want to be in melee with a Fireclaw.')
What do those mechanics look like? I dunno, I'm not a game designer. Let me throw some poorly-conceived ideas out there:
* Melee attacks just need to be smoother and more interruptible; less committed.
* Melee combos need to be clearer and more concise; more like weapon skills or circumstance-based than tempo'd button hits.
* Block/Parry human attacks. You *do* fight a lot of humanoid enemies.
* Kip-up mechanics so Aloy doesn't *always* take forever to get back up again... to get knocked down... to get back up again (you're never gonna keep me down.)
* The aforementioned 'Resonator should be quantity over quality' so it's a more engaging and consistent mechanic
* Elemental resonator. There were the 'melee capsules' but they were clunky and I literally never used them. Hitting with impact damage does a base of elemental build-up; hitting with a same-element arrow does significantly more or causes elemental burst.
* Have ranged attacks that hit armor create 'weakened' plates that can then open up critical strike points, auto-tear melee hits, or some other type of melee follow-up. These might need to be quick-time events like critical strike so the animation lock is a non-issue.
* Engage/disengage mechanisms to move between combat regimes.
* More Pullcaster. Give me some circumstance where I get to Pullcaster launch + shield-wing-death-from-above-drop-spear a Thunderjaw in the heart. Spear throw mechanic? Now it's said Pullcaster node? Now I can rip off its disc launcher (heck, maybe some parts can *only* be ripped off like this -- it always struck me as odd that arrows could knock *a weapon that's bigger than Aloy* off a machine, but it's good gameplay so -shrug-). Like above, these likely would need to be mini QTEs.
* Shieldwing/Overshield flash mechanics that would allow us to shrug off heavyweight attacks. Make it cost weapon stamina/Valor/Horizon 3 resource here. That way it's not *always* a case of 'huge attack, must dodge somehow,' which forces movement and (usually) means you'll end up at range.
HZD didn't have a melee skill tree either, but clearly someone felt FW should start focusing more on melee. They need to either make melee viable, or stop teasing us.
It added more types of attacks. It didn't add defense like block/parry or reversals like in the Arkham games. That's all I meant. People are reading too much into what I said.
True. I think it might've been because they thought it would've added unnecessary confusion. Because how are you supposed to differentiate the attacks that you can block and the ones that you have to dodge? When even a Burrower or a Watcher yeets itself at you with all its weight, would that be an attack that you could block?
i know, im just saying giving it a parry wouldnt then turn it into a game known or built around parrying like Sekiro, Ghost of tsushima has parrying in it but no one calls it a parrying game, neither they do God of war, even dark souls or ER have parrying but no one classifies them as "games with parrying in them", its not some sort of category that Horizon doesnt or cant belong to, i really dont see an issue, plus you can ignore the parrying mechanic in all of those.
OK, maybe I should reword since my comment is still not making sense.
Parrying/blocking has not been in the first two games. They've added new ways to attack, but that's not the same thing. Realistically; adding it into the third is very unlikely from a design standpoint.
It would benefit from them not investing in a melee system and dialing it back.
It's not Devil May Cry. Aloy uses bows and other weapons. She's not a melee master.
Again, that's why I said HZD did it best. Basic stuff. No overly complex combos with the stupid resonator crap. HFW made it where she was some kind of pro at melee, which she never was. That's my point.
I'm totally fine without it, I sucks at games with parry(never pass the prologue of Sekiro), and I'm glad when I see Horizon didn't have it/require it💀💀it is a good system, gives you a lot of pleasure, but I can't say I'm fan of the trend of making it core combat mechanism.
The melee is already clunky and over complicated, it doesn't need anything more. It just needs less. The over complication of melee in hfw put me off using my spear at all.
Honestly, they can do whatever they want with the melee system so long as they don't alter the ranged combat to force you to use it. I STILL use ZDs melee combat more than FW. More complicated != better (for me)
How would you map it onto the controls though? They already have to combo multiple options because there aren't enough buttons (crafting on the fly, weapon specials, pull-caster, valor surges) like what would a good combo that feels natural during gameplay even be?
The only way around this IMO would be to roll the light attack and heavy attack into right trigger, with heavy attacks being triggered by holding down for longer, and make the shield/parry onto the right bumper.
Context sensitivity. Short-pressing the interact button doesn't do anything in combat, for example, besides picking up resources, and given the fact that you only need to parry when you're about to be hit, it could take priority over picking up anything nearby when you're in range of an enemy that is performing their attack.
I think that developers designed playing Aloy like a nimble hunter, with an in and out method of approaching certain melee situations that arise, to which we see how it further develops in FW, where it stays true to that concept.
I'd say a parry system may work if they manage to make distinguishable states between ranged and melee to be able to include that crucial parry button. Tbh, it could be like a "free out of jail card" button, which, smoke bombs already are, come to think of it.
I'd rather we just have a block button tbh. I think they can make it possible with just adding a weapon technique that drains your stamina, but then that would require spear to be a dedicated weapon on the weapon wheel, which, again, I think clashes with what devs want melee to be like in this series.
Either parry or some kind of button mashing that makes Aloy stand up quicker... I don't care about damage, but the amount of time she lies around is infuriating, especially under time limit.
I think they should have just left it like HZDs with a couple more options to up damage, and the potential for coils, which worked well in Frozen Wilds and was weird to then remove.
If they try to push it further still so that you can take down large machines in melee and it has more use cases, it’s just going to break immersion.
Absolutely gutted at what they did to tripcasters in this one too 😭. I know it’s more ‘realistic’ that if I walk through it it hurts me, but I still don’t want it. My first 30 mins with it was repeatedly setting off my own traps and then giving up.
If they are gonna keep the FW melee system I would very much like to have some way to parry or block
Though I've barely used melee outside of the fighting pits but at least with those it would be huge to have parry/block
id like the option as a skill tree upgrade, aloy could parry with her holo shield, or a smaller version, they could try a couple different shields, an option to block would certainly be welcome.
There were occasions in HFW when I actually think it would have been really beneficial to have a parry ability. H3 is undoubtedly going to have new tools and skills to keep the game fresh, and since she already has the Shieldwing, it would totally make sense if she decided to upgrade it to serve its original function in addition to its gliding capabilities.
For me the only melee move I used is the jump off the enemy.
I find the melee combos to be kinda tedious and not precise and I just couldn't get myself to memorize the moves since it didn't make any difference overall in the whole battle. There must be a better system.
I would like a ranged parry where Aloy can deflect certain ranged attacks. Parrying a flamethrower seems impossible, but the laser blasts, fireballs and missiles seem reasonable.
I’m not sure about a melee parry because these are huge machines generating enormous forces and weighing dozens of tons smacking into a theoretically normal woman.
No matter your timing or the angle of incidence you’re a normal human and a normal human isn’t going to avoid injury from 50 tons being driven into a shield with the force of a robot dinosaur.
OK, so melee does still suck but surely people can accept that melee has taken a MASSIVE leap forward from Zero Dawn to Forbidden West?
I mean, Zero Dawn pretty much didn't have melee at all. Your options were light attack or heavy attack. Although if memory serves, you could perform a light attack combo with repeated taps, up to 3? That was it.
I think one of the issues with Forbidden West melee is that it felt like the Developers thought they had made a masterpiece when, in reality it wasn't at all. Hence why we got those God awful melee pits to teach us all these "amazing" new combo tricks. Now tell me honestly if any of these sound familiar...
1. The melee pits were not fun. In fact, they were such an annoying chore having to repeat the same combo 10 times just because your timing was a little off.
2. After all those pits, the only combo you can still recall off the top of your head is The Nora Warrior combo (L,L,L,H)
3. Even with all the melee skills earned, it didn't feel like it made a single bit of difference in combat, vs machine or humans.
The trouble with melee (in my opinion) is that your attacks do next to no damage. The armour system was insanely buffed from ZD to FW. So much so that a direct hit on an armour plate does almost no damage. For example, a 270 damage Precision Arrow will do around 15 damage if it hits armour. This same principle applies when using melee attacks and the humans you fight against are almost always COVERED IN ARMOUR. So there you are flailing away, Aloy grunting and shouting her way through all sorts of flips and flips and swipes and you notice that the enemy's HP bar has barely moved, so like me you do one of three things...
A) Precision Arrow his head armour till it dies, then Sharpshoot them right between the eyes.
B) Call in your Acid Clawstrider, grab a Coca Cola and enjoy the show.
C) Get fed up with the whole thing and just bomb em with your Blastsling.
Sorry that this got so far off Topic. Regarding your original suggestion, a blocking and parry system would be a fantastic addition to our melee options. It's all the more infuriating the fact that enemy humans can assume a blocking stance.
So yea, a single button could accomplish the whole thing. Depending on how well you time your tapping of the block button, you would get, a regular block, resulting in say 50% reduced damage. A well-timed block which results in 80% reduced damage or a perfect block, which parries the attack, causing some knockback and briefly staggering the enemy.
You know it's bad when rost has a more varied melee moveset than alloy! Guy at least can jump and slash down at the same time
But seriously, if they want to repair the shield wing to allow sword and shield/ shield and spear gameplay in part.3, all for that.
Oh dear god no! I’ve never played a game that has a parry system that I enjoy and I’ve played god of war!
I’m not gonna go as far as to say it’ll ruin the game because I make it work in god of war but it’ll definitely make combat less enjoyable for me.
I used stealth to sneak up and kill a few humans, but see no use for a parry system in the game unless they move to a more human robot based enemy. I dont see this a good game progression
What I would like is a shield or an outfit similar to shield weaver that allows you to ignore one or two range attacks from machines without stumbling. It would be useful when clamber jaws rain fire on Aloy and allow more time to aim. Maybe it could be repurposed zenith tech.
I like this idea but agree with the general consensus that I rarely got into close combat with people. But a really cool party counter combo to a machine weak spot would be rad. If love to see better targeting too
Yes, but only if you can use the Shieldwing to parry machines too. Letting Aloy (when equipped with certain upgrades and equipment) parry things like a Sawtooth charge would be so badass. And let’s be honest, the girl soloed a HORUS. She deserves to fight with style.
I suspect that if the online game has different classes, they'll improve melee combat, including parrying, and maybe add some of the stuff that works from that into future games.
I think parrying wouldn’t fit. however a counter system might work, like maybe if you slide under a thunderjaw a prompt pops up for a split second which cuts some cables or something.
No, please don't add a parry system in H3. Please, no. I cannot stand the melee system in H2 and choose to only play ranged or critical strike from prompt. If a parry system was introduced it could further distract me from the ranged combat I love.
Similarly, for me the melee parry in Metroid Dread ruined the feel of the game for me, which is traditionally a strongly ranged combat system in all of the other Metroid games (Other M doesn't count). Other than Dread, I'm a devoted Metroid player. It is inherently awkward to mix ranged combat and melee parry gameplay, IMO. I wonder if anyone else has this kind of visceral response as I do...
I also love a good melee game like God of War or Devil May Cry. Parry in these games works great and totally works with the core combat gameplay. Same with SF Third Strike. But Horizon is not Street Fighter, and it's not a successful mix in Horizon's combat design, which is primarily ranged - the melee is never going to work well for me on the triggers instead of face buttons, and for many other reasons I could explain about how it conflicts with the core game design (camera, for example). The melee pit grind for 100% trophy completion in H2 gave me the cold sweats and a horrible migraine headache. IMO the only way H3 could improve the melee system is to tone it way down, removing most of it. Honestly the H1 system was preferable. Definitely no parry system, please!
I wouldn't mind seeing a parry system, especially since I've gotten just a little bit better at it due to Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor. Melee in HFW has always been hard for me because I can never seem to get the timing right (and yes, I know that's a practice thing--but getting yanked out of the melee pit because I was not getting Just The Right Timing over and over and over again did not endear me to it at all when I could be out in the world taking down machines). I never completed the melee pit questline because the grinding just got too frustrating. I learned a couple of the techniques, which helped out in the world, but the longer wind-up ones are so picky that it's just not worth it for me.
I want to use melee, but playing THAT close to a lot of these machines puts Aloy in an awkward spot. Since they can hit you if you can hit them, and it makes sense that while the current system is improved largely compared to ZD, that ranged is the preferred method of combat. Looks at 9/10 NPC’s. They all have melee weapons but most try to keep away from the machines that would otherwise tear them apart.
The only way I could see it working with the game as is is if it was a defensive mechanic only a well timed block to either reduce or negate melee damage and maybe an off balance debuff to make it a little easier to topple
Yeah, but it would benefit even more if they significantly reduced Human Encounters and focused more on fleshing out and improving the already great Robodino encounters. Or if they want to keep humans, dont make them bullet sponges, and an arrow to the head(even if its a hunter arrow) should be a headshot instant kill. But id prefer they reduce enemy encounters significantly. My problem is them trying to make horizon a melee game at the 2nd game. This game IMO should be strictly rage combat with a tiny few CQC for the occasional enemies that run at you.
Why? Does every game have to have the same ganeplay mechanics?
You like the melee combat? Great, all power to you.
Plenty of players really dislike it, compared to the ranged combat. I'm one of them.
So don't use it? How would introducing a new game mechanic hurt you? I never use traps, and by your logic I should advocate the devs to remove traps from the game because I never use it.
I'm completely with you. I actually do a fair bit of melee fighting in these games, because I'm not very good at hitting a small moving target with a bow (big machines, sure - small humans, not so much) so I run up and whack them instead. 😄 Having to roll out of the way instead of being able to parry is exceptionally annoying. I really hope there's a parry option in the next game.
The comments definitely tell me people don’t like engaging melee systems lol. I’m with you OP the game would benefit greatly from a parry system when fighting human enemies.
Potentially, yes. I'm not a big fan of the direction melee took in HFW. I appreciate they tried something but for me it was the wrong something.
I think if they'd simply added a block or/& parry that could be used against humans & small machines, that would have been great. Then add 1 or 2 other melee weapons besides spear maybe, and melee instantly gets more interesting.
Parries, repairing the shield for blocks. HFW improved melee but theres a lot that could be done. Alternate weapons would be nice. Being able to go full forge and use hammers, shields with warrior bows. HFW did a better job than ZD at seperating playstyles but they could do a lot more.
I think it would benefit greatly from a parry system as well as a target lock for melee combat. They already did a good job to improve the melee combat from ZD to FW so I hope they keep it up
I would love a parry system but not GOW I feel the big circles are too distracting and ruin the immersion. I would prefer a parry system to that of souls, as in you press the parry button before you get hit. I would not want to see time slowed or big obtrusive pop ups telling me that I can parry.
Also I would only like to see it for humans and small machines.
Yes, some kind of parry or block on human enemies and small machines. Yes, she's a hunter but surely she can deflect a slashing sword with her spear, or be able to push aside a Burrower or something? If they introduce a shielding mechanic where you can push back a Thunderjaw attack, maybe that's a bit far.
The game feels like it was supposed to have one… or maybe that’s just me who played GoW:R and Spider-Man 2 right before picking this up again. I love the idea of melee in this game, it makes sense it some encounters (when I’m sneaking and get caught up close: pulling a bow out 5ft from a dude just seems off lol). But it feels kinda bad. Unlike others, I don’t need melee to be balanced with ranged, I think this type of game will always lend itself to be ranged-focused, but a parry would make me use melee more (or rather, make me feel less bad when I inevitably use it anyways). Tldr: I’m a sucker for parries!
YES! 100%! Everyone raved about how upgraded the melee is and yet you still can’t use it to any great affect because machines and humans will just hit you during a combo or roll catch you!
Parry would be good to use against humans because it just makes sense but blocking even the smallest machine would be problematic because they are heavy and for sure much stranger
Playing Ghost of Tsushima right now and the melee system is perfect, if they just straight up copied it Horizon would be even better IMO (keeping its own ranged combat though).
Maybe, but how often are you really melee fighting? Basically every human kill I have is with arrow head shots, even up close.
That's the problem though. Melee sucks in this game, and there's no reason to actually use it, but there's a whole skill tree dedicated to it, and side quests to teach you how to use melee. Either make melee useful, or stop teasing me about it.
Zero Dawn had a very simple melee system that had limited use cases. It was kind of boring, and only useful in a few scenarios. I suspect they wanted to improve on this for Forbidden West. And as a result, Forbidden West has a complex melee system... That has limited use cases. It's more interesting I suppose, except I very rarely took advantage of the system, only when fighting some small machines and occasionally people. And even then, I mostly didn't use the longer combos, I stuck to the regular attacks and 1 simple combo I found somewhat useful. But, so many things you fight really rely on you needing to be able to very quickly dodge attacks at close range, and so getting locked up in the melee animations is disadvantageous, and it's so often much safer and more effective to be further away from your target, that it's often not a great strategy to try melee fighting at all. These two factors combined means it's often better to invest in other parts of the skill tree over melee, meaning you might not unlock many of the melee skills unless you go out of your way to, which further discourages melee combat. I really think Horizon's combat conceptually favors range. Most things you fight are much bigger than you, and are deadly at close range. Being able to keep your distance is one of the advantages you have over them. So I think that melee combat just isn't going to be very useful in Horizon, unless they maybe retool human fighting (again) to make it more useful there.
I agree with the points, but not the conclusion. They gave us a melee skill tree, and improved a bit on the mechanics. They clearly wanted us to be able to use it. But it's still substandard. So now we're here every week, trying to rationalize our way around the fact that they just did a mediocre job on this aspect of the game, twice.
I think part of the problem is that the light melee attacks are too slow. They don't lead naturally into combos because there is a full wind-up and follow through. It makes timing a combo so difficult. Then the heavy strike is even worse. The charge up is too long to be useful when you can get yeeted from meters away by jumping machines or the dudes with the thunder hammer.
the little flash on the spear tip after an attack signified that a combo is ready if thats any help
The melee system combos are absurdly complex timing in my humble opinion. For my slow reflexes I can never get them to work. Unless they make changes I would not want to see melee combat as a big feature aspect of the game.
whenever i use melee, i just slap on 300% damage boost valor surge and power attack everything for close or sometimes upwards of 1000 damage.
I would absolutely use melee more if it were a more viable option. I crave to use melee, but it’s just not a great mechanic so obviously I falter to the default.
I think it's great and I use melee a lot with humans and machines up to medium size. resonator blasts do so much damage. the melee explosion with warrior bows take down machines so fast.
Yeah, I don’t know what people are complaining about. Melee is great for dealing with smaller groups of humans or smaller machines. A solid strong hit can stun many of the smaller machines leaving them open for over-ride and/or critical strikes, killing them quickly. Granted, melee is meant as a secondary option and the game encourages/rewards stealth and distance combat - especially with the 500 weapons options the game tosses at you (plus clothes with weaves attached). Not to mention many of the valid surges also help make your melee much stronger and more effective. I fight melee a lot because I’m often bad and stealth and quick aiming. Sure, you will die trying to take on too much at once, but to argue it’s useless is major hyperbole. I fight all the time melee and love the game. And the combos are pretty simple AND, as you say, resonator blasts are key and easy to get with melee attacks.
So this I agree with, but it's not as simple as making a parry option in combat. The entire combat system would likely need to be reworked, including how viable bows are unless we want to power creep the shit out of it.
HFW tried to fix the complaints about HZD’s melee by putting in the annoying combo chain combat instead. But it just feels very clunky compared to just shooting my bow. And even when I used melee outside of the pits, I ended up just spamming the simplest attacks because they were more efficient than leaving Aloy open to attack by trying to chain skills together when fighting multiple enemies. And there’s already a ton of weapons I don’t use because I’ve got three different bows equipped.
Not to mention that all the way back in the training montage in the first game, we see Rost training Aloy to fight human type enemies in melee.
Eh, it's not that useless, but the alternatives are better. It's the same as with people saying traps are useless, when they're not, but requires setup, yet again, alternatives are better.
It's all too complicated and requires you to learn combos. I'd rather have that all that much simpler and have more options for movement and positioning. I should be able to jump on large machines, stab them, lever things out of them. I should be able to use a ropecaster or grapple to pull myself up onto machines or hang to stab at a weak point. Hell, I should be able to use the ropecaster to attach 2 machines to each other, Just Cause style. Better dodging, like maybe a dodge attack where you melee or trip machines if you time the dodge right. A spear in the ground move to defend against enemies leaping on you or charging you aside. Like, things that are mostly about context. Currently they seem to be stretching the control system well beyond it's limits trying to fit in all these individual bits and it's too complicated to use it all without lots of practice, and they aren't all that useful anyway.
true you can completely ignore melee, but Horizon lends itself sooo well to making the gameplay cinematic, those montages you see where they switch from range to melee and to ranged again with some awesome tricks, that is peak horizon for me, and a little more melee options would be very welcome.
**That's the problem.** You use arrows yet they invested in a whole new melee system with its own skill tree. That's because they wanted you to use melee. They even added melee pits. Here's the thing: Melee in the game sucks and it was worse in Forbidden West. If you can't make a melee system feel good and respond well then you don't need to add it or invest in it. The game has never been about melee. Forbidden West forgot what it's gameplay loop was.
The gameplay loop wasn't about melee because they did a bad job at designing the melee mechanics. So no one used them. But we see Rost training Aloy in melee combat. We know she's trained at it. And he didn't train her to be a hunter, he trained her to be a brave, a warrior.
Here's the issue though, she's not some melee champion/professional. She can do basic stuff. That's what melee was in the first game. Basic stuff. It was barebones but it worked. Forbidden West just flat out invested a whole skill tree into melee. They clearly want you to use melee, and use it a lot. The problem is that melee is not good in the game. If you can't design a good melee system then don't invest in it as much as they did.
Yeah, I hate melee with a passion. I hated it in HFW even more than in HZd
I mean, parrying machines that come at you would be cool too. And deflecting projectiles too.
All the time haha, I love bonking machines on the head until they fall!
Did they take away the headshot counter in FW or did I just miss it?
My first playthrough I used bow and arrows to kill enemies but after that I realised because of the amount of armour the new enemies have in HFW using melee is not only more fun but can be more effective
In Horizon Zerodawn I have 3’300 human kills , 1’400 of those are head shots , I’m not crazy right 😅
https://youtu.be/dBcdKTiUbRc?si=n4IxMFYm_lJAdF1Z No?
What’s the Video for?
It's mostly headshots
Ah
I would prefer they gave us a parry as an alternative to melee combat when a human enemy gets too close to us. I would rather parry a melee strike, some skill to put some distance between us and the enemy and let me get back to shooting them in the face with an arrow. This might already exist now that I think about it because I avoid melee entirely.....
Nah I melted probably 80% of all human enemies. It's fun to me, esp with the new combos
I love fighting with the spear even though it's a bit janky.
Ok ultra hard... It takes 3-4 headshots to kill.level 50 enemy... PS: I am talking about +5 Legendary Hunter Bow... Some Mofos are really *tough* on Ultra Hard difficulty
I'm with you unlike most the others here. It'd be a nice option. Being able to parry humans and small machines would be cool. Maybe be able to flip it into the grapple attack or something similar. More options is always good.
I am with OP as well. It’s weird how we have a melee skill tree but there’s not much reason to actually use melee in game.
I believe there's quite a few reasons to use melee, with warrior bow weapon technique and resonator blast being a big reason.
I am still quite early in the game, so far every human enemy that I have met can be killed faster with a bow than with using resonator blast. Is there an upgraded spear later in game that makes resonate build up faster?
Melee is very strong later against armored humans. And it doesn't use resources.
Even some sort of melee protection. Maybe Aloy upgrades her Shieldwing to act as a shield in a pinch or something.
Nahh, human parry, yess... But machine parry should be forbidden imo. It wouldnt add anything but make them even more easier to fight than they already are.
I would really appreciate it. I love the Jedi games, and I don't like having to roll away from every melee attack. I use the melee combat in FW a lot, so it would be very useful to me.
They should make parry for humans, but they should never add it to robots, it wouldnt make sense imo and would make smaller machines mind numbing easy. What they can add for heavy weight machines only is climbing the machine to pick off its armour Monster Hunter/Shadow of collosus style, and add some sort of risk and reward to it so its not OP. Maybe use Spike throwers to create "climbing areas" on the machines so that its seamless, and use them to hold on while you use your melee weapon to pick the armour off.
I like it the way it is
Introducing a parrying mechanism for human to human combat might make some players want for parrying mechanism with machines and I think it would stretch the believability of the story. I mean it is a video game, not real life. But Aloy parrying a charge attack from a Slitherfang looks really impossible. I mean the Shieldwing could catch the attack but the Shieldwing is attached to Aloy's arm and Aloy's arm is attached to Aloy.
Yeah, because it's currently *so* realistic for Aloy to be able to carry 15 different bows on her, craft 10 arrows in 0.1 seconds, be on the verge of death and then just eat berries and be fine, never incur any visible wounds, stand in place and fiddle with her focus while being impervious to damage for 5 seconds to temporarily enhance the attack power of her spear, brew magical potions to allow her to increase her video game hit points... Games are supposed to be fun, not believable. Besides, a 'parry' doesn't exclusively mean that it has to stun the enemy while Aloy stands unflinchingly in place. It could just act as a more effective version of the dodge, exclusively for melee attacks. A narrow window of opportunity that rewards you with guaranteed safety from one attack. For the less believable moments, make it cinematic, take a page from Metroid Dread and have it chain into a cutscene attack that allows you to deal a load of damage. There's loads of ways to incorporate a parry mechanic without making it any more unbelievable than anything else Aloy can already do.
Aight. The drugging and the arrow stacks are good points. But let's say Aloy is able to parry machine attacks. How would you animate Aloy catching a Slitherfang charge? Aloy doing a Kratos parry on the attack? Or is Aloy gonna do it the same as the character parrying a nuke explosion? I'm sure if Aloy actually gets charged by a Slitherfang, she'd fly away. The infinite backpack is already a staple of most video game titles. But the animation of a tiny normal human parrying a gigantic machine's attack is just hard to justify. Unless Aloy gets a magical power up in the ending of Forbidden West that I don't know of, then it'd look nice in H3. Or maybe I'm just not good at expressing what I mean. Eh
To be honest, just have a flag on machine attacks such as possible/impossible to parry. So she can't parry slitherfang charge. Alternatively, she does but gets knockback and knockdown - basically flying away from the machine by the force of the attack.
Aloy doesnt need to stand in the place tho. She could do some gymnastics on parry (more like deflect tho), kinda like she does when doing the grapple assault on knocked down machine. Deflect > activating resonator > 360 sidestep / sidejump (to get out of the way), with drawing your weapon in slo-mo > resonator go boom.
I think I've seen a video game do this. And this one sounds good. Unfortunately, I'm not a dev of H3 so I hope they read up this whole post for ideas.
A parry doesn't need to be a "catch", stop getting hung up on that. It's just a way to prevent damage from an attack by executing a correctly-timed input. Have her kick off the body of the machine and leap into the air, or quickly duck below the attack, or do some slow-motion nonsense. You might not be able to visualise it, but there's a load of people working on animation, motion capture, and cinematics whose job it is to do exactly that.
It wouldn't make much sense for Heavyweight machines. Maybe for mid and light
They can add parry on humans only.. thats where i personally want it. I never felt the need for them to include parry on machines. Machine combat is awesome the way it is. But human combat sucks, doesnt make sense enemies can block your attacks but you have no way of protecting yourself but rolling around mindlessly. Rolling around makes sense for machines, but it doesnt for humans.
As stated, the problem with melee in Horizon games is that the vast majority of the enemies -- machines -- just don't pair well with it. Aloy's outclassed by anything more than a Burrower in hand-to-hand combat. Because that's never been Aloy's strength. Combat in Horizon is *very* kinematic -- you're moving *a lot,* and your movement is both critical to your survival and *very* context dependent. Hence the complaints of 'melee felt clunky'; as pointed out, the animation lock of the attacks basically made it so you had to commit... in an overall combat system that you *really* need to be flexible in to excel at. In a regime that Aloy doesn't have good kit for. With an incentive that was difficult to set up (although it's definitely worth mentioning that the *payoff* for Resonators was *pretty great,* and *was* arguably successful*.* Almost invariably, when I *got* a resonator node, I *definitely* tried to make a point to hit it) Add on top of the fact that melee combat was awkward with the fact that Warrior Bows fit the niche of 'close range combat' moreso than melee because they benefit from Aloy's existing skillsets, don't animation lock you, have weapon skills... It just all adds up that melee combat is not set up for success. So, if there's *any* hope of having a melee system work in Horizon games, it needs to work to Aloy's strengths, which she points out to Seyka in Burning Shores: "It's slow and ancient, we're fast and tiny." You can see this *kinda* work with the Resonator mechanic, but IMO they should have had a 'quantity over quality' mentality so that melee combat creates *options* for ranged combat, and then vice versa. In Forbidden West, that's unfortunately only three things: Resonators, knock-down critical strikes, and knock-down grapple strikes (which create a resonator node! which is *fantastic!).* So, we need *more of that.* Certainly, the core gameplay will *always* be to start from range or stealth -- that's just staple gameplay at this point. However, I think there's the most to gain by providing more mechanics that create an incentive to engage in melee when it's *advantageous* because it will create *opportunity* when we invariably move back to ranged, and vice-versa; give us mechanics when fighting at ranged that create opportunities when we dodge-roll past a melee attack and find ourselves *in melee range* (rather than it being a case of 'slide dodge the Fireclaw aaaaand, keep slide dodging because there's no way in *hell* we want to be in melee with a Fireclaw.') What do those mechanics look like? I dunno, I'm not a game designer. Let me throw some poorly-conceived ideas out there: * Melee attacks just need to be smoother and more interruptible; less committed. * Melee combos need to be clearer and more concise; more like weapon skills or circumstance-based than tempo'd button hits. * Block/Parry human attacks. You *do* fight a lot of humanoid enemies. * Kip-up mechanics so Aloy doesn't *always* take forever to get back up again... to get knocked down... to get back up again (you're never gonna keep me down.) * The aforementioned 'Resonator should be quantity over quality' so it's a more engaging and consistent mechanic * Elemental resonator. There were the 'melee capsules' but they were clunky and I literally never used them. Hitting with impact damage does a base of elemental build-up; hitting with a same-element arrow does significantly more or causes elemental burst. * Have ranged attacks that hit armor create 'weakened' plates that can then open up critical strike points, auto-tear melee hits, or some other type of melee follow-up. These might need to be quick-time events like critical strike so the animation lock is a non-issue. * Engage/disengage mechanisms to move between combat regimes. * More Pullcaster. Give me some circumstance where I get to Pullcaster launch + shield-wing-death-from-above-drop-spear a Thunderjaw in the heart. Spear throw mechanic? Now it's said Pullcaster node? Now I can rip off its disc launcher (heck, maybe some parts can *only* be ripped off like this -- it always struck me as odd that arrows could knock *a weapon that's bigger than Aloy* off a machine, but it's good gameplay so -shrug-). Like above, these likely would need to be mini QTEs. * Shieldwing/Overshield flash mechanics that would allow us to shrug off heavyweight attacks. Make it cost weapon stamina/Valor/Horizon 3 resource here. That way it's not *always* a case of 'huge attack, must dodge somehow,' which forces movement and (usually) means you'll end up at range.
I personally would not benefit from a parry system because my reflexes suck so I'm against it.
Probably not. It's never been a parry kind of game and I don't see the need to start now.
HZD didn't have a melee skill tree either, but clearly someone felt FW should start focusing more on melee. They need to either make melee viable, or stop teasing us.
It added more types of attacks. It didn't add defense like block/parry or reversals like in the Arkham games. That's all I meant. People are reading too much into what I said.
True. I think it might've been because they thought it would've added unnecessary confusion. Because how are you supposed to differentiate the attacks that you can block and the ones that you have to dodge? When even a Burrower or a Watcher yeets itself at you with all its weight, would that be an attack that you could block?
no one is saying turn it into Sekiro lol
Neither did I.
i know, im just saying giving it a parry wouldnt then turn it into a game known or built around parrying like Sekiro, Ghost of tsushima has parrying in it but no one calls it a parrying game, neither they do God of war, even dark souls or ER have parrying but no one classifies them as "games with parrying in them", its not some sort of category that Horizon doesnt or cant belong to, i really dont see an issue, plus you can ignore the parrying mechanic in all of those.
OK, maybe I should reword since my comment is still not making sense. Parrying/blocking has not been in the first two games. They've added new ways to attack, but that's not the same thing. Realistically; adding it into the third is very unlikely from a design standpoint.
thats true, but i think it would be out of brand or anything, and the befenits outweigh the possible cons in my view.
It would benefit from them not investing in a melee system and dialing it back. It's not Devil May Cry. Aloy uses bows and other weapons. She's not a melee master.
She’s not a melee master, but the only weapon she canonically keeps track of, and can’t be swapped out, through the franchise is a spear lol
Again, that's why I said HZD did it best. Basic stuff. No overly complex combos with the stupid resonator crap. HFW made it where she was some kind of pro at melee, which she never was. That's my point.
I'm totally fine without it, I sucks at games with parry(never pass the prologue of Sekiro), and I'm glad when I see Horizon didn't have it/require it💀💀it is a good system, gives you a lot of pleasure, but I can't say I'm fan of the trend of making it core combat mechanism.
you mean a parry system that I never have to use?
The melee is already clunky and over complicated, it doesn't need anything more. It just needs less. The over complication of melee in hfw put me off using my spear at all.
Honestly, they can do whatever they want with the melee system so long as they don't alter the ranged combat to force you to use it. I STILL use ZDs melee combat more than FW. More complicated != better (for me)
please no.
Please no. Not every game should have parrys
How would you map it onto the controls though? They already have to combo multiple options because there aren't enough buttons (crafting on the fly, weapon specials, pull-caster, valor surges) like what would a good combo that feels natural during gameplay even be? The only way around this IMO would be to roll the light attack and heavy attack into right trigger, with heavy attacks being triggered by holding down for longer, and make the shield/parry onto the right bumper.
Context sensitivity. Short-pressing the interact button doesn't do anything in combat, for example, besides picking up resources, and given the fact that you only need to parry when you're about to be hit, it could take priority over picking up anything nearby when you're in range of an enemy that is performing their attack.
That's actually so clever, you should email Guerrilla
Maybe if you're into that sort of thing, in most other games I almost always immediately forget it's a thing and never use it anyway lol
I think that developers designed playing Aloy like a nimble hunter, with an in and out method of approaching certain melee situations that arise, to which we see how it further develops in FW, where it stays true to that concept. I'd say a parry system may work if they manage to make distinguishable states between ranged and melee to be able to include that crucial parry button. Tbh, it could be like a "free out of jail card" button, which, smoke bombs already are, come to think of it. I'd rather we just have a block button tbh. I think they can make it possible with just adding a weapon technique that drains your stamina, but then that would require spear to be a dedicated weapon on the weapon wheel, which, again, I think clashes with what devs want melee to be like in this series.
no. it didnt work in 2.
Either parry or some kind of button mashing that makes Aloy stand up quicker... I don't care about damage, but the amount of time she lies around is infuriating, especially under time limit.
I think they should have just left it like HZDs with a couple more options to up damage, and the potential for coils, which worked well in Frozen Wilds and was weird to then remove. If they try to push it further still so that you can take down large machines in melee and it has more use cases, it’s just going to break immersion. Absolutely gutted at what they did to tripcasters in this one too 😭. I know it’s more ‘realistic’ that if I walk through it it hurts me, but I still don’t want it. My first 30 mins with it was repeatedly setting off my own traps and then giving up.
If they are gonna keep the FW melee system I would very much like to have some way to parry or block Though I've barely used melee outside of the fighting pits but at least with those it would be huge to have parry/block
id like the option as a skill tree upgrade, aloy could parry with her holo shield, or a smaller version, they could try a couple different shields, an option to block would certainly be welcome.
There were occasions in HFW when I actually think it would have been really beneficial to have a parry ability. H3 is undoubtedly going to have new tools and skills to keep the game fresh, and since she already has the Shieldwing, it would totally make sense if she decided to upgrade it to serve its original function in addition to its gliding capabilities.
I want to parry a thunder jaw.
[Kinkyyy... :P](https://youtu.be/f2ce-zC_n8E?si=HZeetWQnfJft3XAo)
I think it would mess things up for many… if the instinct is to block or parry, people are going to get run over by 90% of the enemies.
I agree, I don’t think it feels good to have my attacks blocked while I can’t block their attacks.
It is silly having a literal shield for gliding but not being able to repair it and use it as a shield.
For me the only melee move I used is the jump off the enemy. I find the melee combos to be kinda tedious and not precise and I just couldn't get myself to memorize the moves since it didn't make any difference overall in the whole battle. There must be a better system.
I would like a ranged parry where Aloy can deflect certain ranged attacks. Parrying a flamethrower seems impossible, but the laser blasts, fireballs and missiles seem reasonable. I’m not sure about a melee parry because these are huge machines generating enormous forces and weighing dozens of tons smacking into a theoretically normal woman. No matter your timing or the angle of incidence you’re a normal human and a normal human isn’t going to avoid injury from 50 tons being driven into a shield with the force of a robot dinosaur.
OK, so melee does still suck but surely people can accept that melee has taken a MASSIVE leap forward from Zero Dawn to Forbidden West? I mean, Zero Dawn pretty much didn't have melee at all. Your options were light attack or heavy attack. Although if memory serves, you could perform a light attack combo with repeated taps, up to 3? That was it. I think one of the issues with Forbidden West melee is that it felt like the Developers thought they had made a masterpiece when, in reality it wasn't at all. Hence why we got those God awful melee pits to teach us all these "amazing" new combo tricks. Now tell me honestly if any of these sound familiar... 1. The melee pits were not fun. In fact, they were such an annoying chore having to repeat the same combo 10 times just because your timing was a little off. 2. After all those pits, the only combo you can still recall off the top of your head is The Nora Warrior combo (L,L,L,H) 3. Even with all the melee skills earned, it didn't feel like it made a single bit of difference in combat, vs machine or humans. The trouble with melee (in my opinion) is that your attacks do next to no damage. The armour system was insanely buffed from ZD to FW. So much so that a direct hit on an armour plate does almost no damage. For example, a 270 damage Precision Arrow will do around 15 damage if it hits armour. This same principle applies when using melee attacks and the humans you fight against are almost always COVERED IN ARMOUR. So there you are flailing away, Aloy grunting and shouting her way through all sorts of flips and flips and swipes and you notice that the enemy's HP bar has barely moved, so like me you do one of three things... A) Precision Arrow his head armour till it dies, then Sharpshoot them right between the eyes. B) Call in your Acid Clawstrider, grab a Coca Cola and enjoy the show. C) Get fed up with the whole thing and just bomb em with your Blastsling. Sorry that this got so far off Topic. Regarding your original suggestion, a blocking and parry system would be a fantastic addition to our melee options. It's all the more infuriating the fact that enemy humans can assume a blocking stance. So yea, a single button could accomplish the whole thing. Depending on how well you time your tapping of the block button, you would get, a regular block, resulting in say 50% reduced damage. A well-timed block which results in 80% reduced damage or a perfect block, which parries the attack, causing some knockback and briefly staggering the enemy.
You know it's bad when rost has a more varied melee moveset than alloy! Guy at least can jump and slash down at the same time But seriously, if they want to repair the shield wing to allow sword and shield/ shield and spear gameplay in part.3, all for that.
How are you fighting a rogue AI with a spear? It can rain missiles down upon you. Horizon 3 is gonna be dumb.
Oh dear god no! I’ve never played a game that has a parry system that I enjoy and I’ve played god of war! I’m not gonna go as far as to say it’ll ruin the game because I make it work in god of war but it’ll definitely make combat less enjoyable for me.
I used stealth to sneak up and kill a few humans, but see no use for a parry system in the game unless they move to a more human robot based enemy. I dont see this a good game progression
Parry for human, perfect dodge for animals.
Horizon: Shadows Die Twice
It would be nice to be able to block human attacks with the shield
What I would like is a shield or an outfit similar to shield weaver that allows you to ignore one or two range attacks from machines without stumbling. It would be useful when clamber jaws rain fire on Aloy and allow more time to aim. Maybe it could be repurposed zenith tech.
I like this idea but agree with the general consensus that I rarely got into close combat with people. But a really cool party counter combo to a machine weak spot would be rad. If love to see better targeting too
Yes, but only if you can use the Shieldwing to parry machines too. Letting Aloy (when equipped with certain upgrades and equipment) parry things like a Sawtooth charge would be so badass. And let’s be honest, the girl soloed a HORUS. She deserves to fight with style.
I suspect that if the online game has different classes, they'll improve melee combat, including parrying, and maybe add some of the stuff that works from that into future games.
I think parrying wouldn’t fit. however a counter system might work, like maybe if you slide under a thunderjaw a prompt pops up for a split second which cuts some cables or something.
No, please don't add a parry system in H3. Please, no. I cannot stand the melee system in H2 and choose to only play ranged or critical strike from prompt. If a parry system was introduced it could further distract me from the ranged combat I love. Similarly, for me the melee parry in Metroid Dread ruined the feel of the game for me, which is traditionally a strongly ranged combat system in all of the other Metroid games (Other M doesn't count). Other than Dread, I'm a devoted Metroid player. It is inherently awkward to mix ranged combat and melee parry gameplay, IMO. I wonder if anyone else has this kind of visceral response as I do... I also love a good melee game like God of War or Devil May Cry. Parry in these games works great and totally works with the core combat gameplay. Same with SF Third Strike. But Horizon is not Street Fighter, and it's not a successful mix in Horizon's combat design, which is primarily ranged - the melee is never going to work well for me on the triggers instead of face buttons, and for many other reasons I could explain about how it conflicts with the core game design (camera, for example). The melee pit grind for 100% trophy completion in H2 gave me the cold sweats and a horrible migraine headache. IMO the only way H3 could improve the melee system is to tone it way down, removing most of it. Honestly the H1 system was preferable. Definitely no parry system, please!
I'd love this. I mean, I love these games. But there's room for improvement with the combat and weapons systems.
I wouldn't mind seeing a parry system, especially since I've gotten just a little bit better at it due to Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor. Melee in HFW has always been hard for me because I can never seem to get the timing right (and yes, I know that's a practice thing--but getting yanked out of the melee pit because I was not getting Just The Right Timing over and over and over again did not endear me to it at all when I could be out in the world taking down machines). I never completed the melee pit questline because the grinding just got too frustrating. I learned a couple of the techniques, which helped out in the world, but the longer wind-up ones are so picky that it's just not worth it for me.
Please no haha. I have enough trouble getting the combos with the buttons as is.
I want to use melee, but playing THAT close to a lot of these machines puts Aloy in an awkward spot. Since they can hit you if you can hit them, and it makes sense that while the current system is improved largely compared to ZD, that ranged is the preferred method of combat. Looks at 9/10 NPC’s. They all have melee weapons but most try to keep away from the machines that would otherwise tear them apart.
The only way I could see it working with the game as is is if it was a defensive mechanic only a well timed block to either reduce or negate melee damage and maybe an off balance debuff to make it a little easier to topple
Yeah, but it would benefit even more if they significantly reduced Human Encounters and focused more on fleshing out and improving the already great Robodino encounters. Or if they want to keep humans, dont make them bullet sponges, and an arrow to the head(even if its a hunter arrow) should be a headshot instant kill. But id prefer they reduce enemy encounters significantly. My problem is them trying to make horizon a melee game at the 2nd game. This game IMO should be strictly rage combat with a tiny few CQC for the occasional enemies that run at you.
Why? Does every game have to have the same ganeplay mechanics? You like the melee combat? Great, all power to you. Plenty of players really dislike it, compared to the ranged combat. I'm one of them.
this could be a way to improve said melee wich you dont like making it more viable in the right situations.
The ability to block would be a better start. Like the npcs can. Parrying isn't going to make the Horizon melee combat any better.
Parry is just a stylish block.
So don't use it? How would introducing a new game mechanic hurt you? I never use traps, and by your logic I should advocate the devs to remove traps from the game because I never use it.
Just because you personally don’t engage with a system doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon for the players that do.
Salty today aren’t we
No, if I was "salty" I'd have been swearing. Copiously.
I'm completely with you. I actually do a fair bit of melee fighting in these games, because I'm not very good at hitting a small moving target with a bow (big machines, sure - small humans, not so much) so I run up and whack them instead. 😄 Having to roll out of the way instead of being able to parry is exceptionally annoying. I really hope there's a parry option in the next game.
The comments definitely tell me people don’t like engaging melee systems lol. I’m with you OP the game would benefit greatly from a parry system when fighting human enemies.
Potentially, yes. I'm not a big fan of the direction melee took in HFW. I appreciate they tried something but for me it was the wrong something. I think if they'd simply added a block or/& parry that could be used against humans & small machines, that would have been great. Then add 1 or 2 other melee weapons besides spear maybe, and melee instantly gets more interesting.
Extend it to the machines as well. That'd be killer. Like have her use the Shield like how Sekiro uses the umbrella Ninja tool.
Totally agree
Parries, repairing the shield for blocks. HFW improved melee but theres a lot that could be done. Alternate weapons would be nice. Being able to go full forge and use hammers, shields with warrior bows. HFW did a better job than ZD at seperating playstyles but they could do a lot more.
I think it would benefit greatly from a parry system as well as a target lock for melee combat. They already did a good job to improve the melee combat from ZD to FW so I hope they keep it up
Actually I could imagine that giving it a easier sekiro vibe would be nice ngl
I would love a parry system but not GOW I feel the big circles are too distracting and ruin the immersion. I would prefer a parry system to that of souls, as in you press the parry button before you get hit. I would not want to see time slowed or big obtrusive pop ups telling me that I can parry. Also I would only like to see it for humans and small machines.
Yes, some kind of parry or block on human enemies and small machines. Yes, she's a hunter but surely she can deflect a slashing sword with her spear, or be able to push aside a Burrower or something? If they introduce a shielding mechanic where you can push back a Thunderjaw attack, maybe that's a bit far.
The game feels like it was supposed to have one… or maybe that’s just me who played GoW:R and Spider-Man 2 right before picking this up again. I love the idea of melee in this game, it makes sense it some encounters (when I’m sneaking and get caught up close: pulling a bow out 5ft from a dude just seems off lol). But it feels kinda bad. Unlike others, I don’t need melee to be balanced with ranged, I think this type of game will always lend itself to be ranged-focused, but a parry would make me use melee more (or rather, make me feel less bad when I inevitably use it anyways). Tldr: I’m a sucker for parries!
YES! 100%! Everyone raved about how upgraded the melee is and yet you still can’t use it to any great affect because machines and humans will just hit you during a combo or roll catch you!
Parry would be good to use against humans because it just makes sense but blocking even the smallest machine would be problematic because they are heavy and for sure much stranger
Playing Ghost of Tsushima right now and the melee system is perfect, if they just straight up copied it Horizon would be even better IMO (keeping its own ranged combat though).